Audio content streams are commonly provided by broadcast sources. For instance, Amplitude Modulated (AM) and Frequency Modulated (FM) radio stations have been in existence for this and most of the previous century. More recently, other types of audio broadcast sources have become available such as satellite radio, Internet radio, and digital radio. Some of these broadcast sources are limited to a particular geographical range as the broadcast signal tends to diminish in strength with distance from the broadcast transmitter.
It is common that within a given geographical region, there may be multiple broadcast sources available for a given audio content stream. For instance, consider an audio feed from a live sporting event. Often, one can obtain the same audio feed from both an AM radio station and an FM radio station. If the quality of the received audio signal from the current station diminishes, then the user might search for other stations, if any, that provide the same audio content stream.
There are regions in the world in which radio stations not only broadcast an audio content stream, but also broadcast associated metadata that definitively identifies the audio content stream. For instance, many European radio stations employ a Radio Data Systems (or RDS) protocol in which some digital information is embedded within conventional FM radio broadcasts. However, much of the world still does not use such broadcast protocols. Furthermore, the digital information identifying the audio content is not continuously transmitted at every instant for every radio station, and thus using that information to always know alternative sources is much more than a trivial problem even in that setting.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.